Fiber Splice Ticket Note: What to Document After a Mid-Span Splice

A fusion splice takes minutes to fire. The ticket note after it decides whether the span stays traceable. "Spliced fibers, link restored" is the note everyone writes and nobody can audit: which tray, which fiber positions, what loss did the splicer report, and did the OTDR agree? A year later, when a tech is chasing a loss budget that doesn't add up, an undocumented splice becomes the prime suspect. This is the note that closes a splice for good.

Before you fire the splicer: capture the fault picture

• Splice location and access point. Site, room, rack, or outside-plant location (manhole/vault, splice case model and serial), plus the exact splice tray or cassette number and fiber position inside it. "Spliced at the vault" is not a location.
• Fiber identity on both sides. Cable ID, fiber count, and strand/tube position on each side of the splice (e.g., cable C-241 tube 3 fiber blue → cable C-242 tube 2 fiber white). Label both fibers before stripping; a buffer tube full of bare fiber with no labels is how strands get swapped.
• Pre-splice evidence, quoted. The OTDR trace or light-meter reading that condemned the span: wavelength used, distance to the fault or break, and the loss signature. Record the baseline trace filename — the post-splice trace gets compared against it.
• Scope of the repair. Which fibers are being spliced and which are passing through untouched. If only 2 of 48 strands broke, document that the other 46 were inspected and left alone.

The splice itself: what goes in the ticket

1. Per-fiber splice loss readings. The fusion splicer's estimated loss for every splice, in dB — not an average, per fiber. Good fusion splices land at 0.05 dB or less; anything over 0.1 dB gets a re-fire.
2. Re-fire count and cause. If a fiber took three fires to pass, say so and record why (bad cleave, contamination, arc calibration). A fiber that needed four fires is worth flagging for future attention.
3. Sleeve and tray work. Splice sleeve type/length used, the tray position each splice was placed in, slack management (coil diameter kept above minimum bend radius), and confirmation the tray lid closed without pinching.
4. Post-splice OTDR verification. Trace taken from the same span end at the same wavelength as the baseline, showing the splice event at the expected distance with the expected loss. This catches macro-bends from tray closures that the splicer reading never sees.
5. End-to-end result. Link state after the repair (no-link cleared, light levels at both ends, BER/error counters clean for the acceptance window). Close on verified end-to-end results, never on "splice looks good."

A splice ticket note that closes cleanly

Splice repair: vault MH-12, FOSC 400 case SN F400-8841,
tray 2, positions 7-8. Fiber: C-241 tube 3 blue → C-242
tube 2 white. Fault: break at 1,842 m (OTDR 1310 nm,
baseline trace ot-dr-mh12-0840.sor on file).
Splice 1 (blue): 0.03 dB, single fire, 60 mm sleeve.
Splice 2 (white): 0.04 dB, single fire, 60 mm sleeve.
Tray closed, slack coil ~76 mm radius, no pinching.
Post-splice OTDR 1310 nm: splice events at 1,842 m,
0.04/0.04 dB. End-to-end: no-link cleared 10:22,
RX levels -8.2/-8.5 dBm, error counters clean 15 min.
As-built updated: cable IDs C-241/C-242 sheet 4,
both fibers re-labeled in tray. Photos on file.

The mistakes that reopen splice tickets

• No per-fiber loss readings. Then the next OTDR shows an unexplained event and nobody knows whether the splice has always been 0.2 dB or just degraded. Record every reading at splice time.
• Skipping the post-splice OTDR. The splicer estimate is made at the bench; the OTDR trace is the proof from the span end. A pinched tray can read 0.03 dB on the splicer and 0.4 dB on the trace.
• Unlabeled bare fiber. Two fibers in a buffer tube with no labels before stripping is how strands get crossed. Label first, strip second — the ticket should list the labels.
• As-builts never updated. The splice lives in your head until it's in the documentation. If the as-built doesn't show the splice case, the next tech rediscovers it by tripping over it.
• Tray closed without checking bends. A splice can test clean and still fail under a pinched tray lid. Close the tray, re-check, then close the ticket.

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